Skydiving in Oahu

A few guys had came up to me on the ship a couple of weeks before pulling into Hawaii and asked if I wanted to go skydiving with them. I figured this as good as time as any to do sssomething that I kept telling myself I was going to do if I ever got the chance.

We woke up and drove up to Dillinger Airfield on the Northwest part of Oahu. We signed the 5 page waiver and watched a small video on what was going to happen. After that we met the professional that was going to be jumping with us.

My guy, Mike, went over his set of instructions pretty fast about what to do as soon as we jump then we loaded up and went to get into our plane.

We loaded up on to the plane and then took off. The climb was pretty quick and I can't even remember now what was going through my head as we climbed up. I remember it being very cold and I loved the view my guy was nice enough to point out several markers along the coast that he said I should go visit. The weather was perfect, there were some clouds but they seemed to open up right at the perfect time because we could see straight down to the ocean below.



We then leveled off and my buddy Dave was the first to go. He and his partner got up and walked to the door and in an instant they were gone. Next was my turn. There was about a 2 second period there when I saw him fall out the plane that I said to myself, "What the heck am I doing?" But kept walking towards the door. I got one last set of instructions from Mike and then our camera man jumped and then so did we. Well not so much jumped but pushed, all the professionals were very pushy but I figured that was so we didn't get second thoughts or at least act on them.

The first thing I noticed was my ears didn't pop like they should have so I had this splitting headache all the way down. I managed a couple smiles for the camerman and then just admired the free fall as the coast line kept getting closer and closer. After about a minute Mike opened the parachut and suprisingly the jerk wasn't as bad as I would have thought. We coasted down all the mean while I'm doing everything to pop my ears and listen to what Mike is saying. I got to steer the chute for a little bit as he showed me some basic maneuvers with the chute.

Finally it was time to land and he told me we were going to try a 'running landing'. As we were coming into the landing zone he told me start running and I did only as I hit the ground I realized I didn't know how to run with a 170 pound guy on my back so we took two steps and crashed, my knees taking the brunt of the blow. We get up shake the grass off and start walking back and I notice everybody else is landing straight down and wonder to myself why couldn't we have done that?

Other than the landing and the ear popping thing I had a blast and was glad that I chose to do it. Hawaii was definitly a good place to do it. I'm pretty sure given the chance to go again I will.

I'm Back In Japan!!

I got home last week and will be posting stories from the last couple of legs from my trip starting from the most recent working backwards. Hope you all enjoy them and keep checking back as I load more.

Republic of the Marshall Islands

Our final stop came in Majuro, RMI. Unlike the Solomon Islands where we had to look for work, there was an abundance of stray dogs roaming around and it was apparent within minutes of being on the island. RMI is made up of several atolls (look it up) and islands and we we focused mainly on the atoll of Majuro where the capitol and a good percentage of the people were living.

We had established a local contact there who along with other volunteers made our jobs easy. They organized places for us to go and had arranged for people to bring their pets in just like a normal clinic would run. Overall we saw 48 animals for surgery, and over 400 for vaccinations and deworming. The people there all said it was a much needed effort as the economy isn't good enough to have a veterinarian permanently on staff. They rely solely on humanitarian missions like this one to help out, but these only happen so often.

The last day couldn't have come fast enough. After the last animals came we donated the rest of our supplies to their small organization and gave several ideas about how to get funding for vets to visit more often.

Now we are a couple days out from Hawaii where we will debark the ship. The last couple of months has been a interesting and enjoyable experience that I will never forget. Looking back we did alot of great things that got overshadowed by the human medical side who did extremely well in their mission as well. I met alot of interesting people and saw alot of awesome places that I probably never would have seen without this mission. Overall I am pleased with how this all went and hope that this type of mission continues in the future and one day I might get selected to join up with another group and do this all over again.